GRAND RAPIDS, MI — U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga on Monday pushed back against President Barack Obama's claim that all of Congress had been briefed on controversial federal surveillance practices now under fire.

Appearing on MSNBC's Jansing & Co., Huizenga, R-Zeeland, said he and other colleagues he'd talked to were unaware the National Security Agency was reportedly monitoring Americans' phone records and pulling customer data from corporate giants like Facebook, Google and Apple.

Watch video of Huizenga's appearance below.

"I had no idea that they were going in and doing this 'Dragne't type of a program, where they were going in and scooping up everybody's phone call records and those kinds of things," Huizenga told host Chris Jansing.

"Certainly," he continued, "this new revelation about going in and gathering everybody's Facebook and Google and everything else that's been going on, that was news to me, and I think a lot of my colleagues as well."

Huizenga did stop short of exacting judgment on Edward Snowden, who stepped forward Sunday as the man who leaked the NSA's surveillance practices to the Guardian newspaper.

Asked by Jansing whether Snowden should be prosecuted as a criminal, or hailed as a whistleblower, Huizenga demurred.

"I'm not ready to declare him either a hero or a tyrant," said Huizenga, who went on to say Snowden "had other avenues he could have gone down rather than disclosing this to the foreign press."

"All you have to do is turn on the myriad of cable programs and you'll see congressmen and women and senators who are questioning these things," Huizenga said. "He could have easily gone and approached one of those offices, had a conversation that way, as opposed to going and disclosing this to a foreign press agency."

Jansing noted Huizenga voted in favor of renewing the contentious Patriot Act, and asked whether he now viewed that move as a mistake given the leaks.

That legislation grants the federal government broad powers to track terrorism suspects, but has been derided by critics for its perceived threat to civil liberties.

Huizenga again demurred, saying he was not prepared to characterize the vote, but had lingering questions about what lawmakers were not told about national security practices.

"I think there's an absence of information, though, when we're going into some of these votes," Huizenga said.

"I've got classified briefings before, and some of these, not on these particular issues, so when the president's going out saying 'Well, Congress was fully briefed,' well, as a rank-and-file member, we were not fully briefed about these types of specific issues, on what was happening."